


For Even Dead Gods Dream

by FireEye



Category: Final Fantasy VI
Genre: F/F, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:27:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28308981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireEye/pseuds/FireEye
Summary: Terra's attachment to the human world weakens, prompting Locke and Celes to seek out what remains of the Esper Gate.
Relationships: Terra Branford/Locke Cole/Celes Chere
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	For Even Dead Gods Dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mehuric](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mehuric/gifts).



They managed to uncover the Sealed Gate, or what remained of it. The floating continent had crashed to the ocean floor, and it had only taken every favor Locke ever had on credit to get the resources to try and find it.

And a little resourceful creativity on top of that.

The expedition proved difficult. But there were underwater caverns full of stale air, and as their fortune had it, the Gate itself was in one of them. If their luck held, whatever was behind it would be as dry.

If only they could _open_ it.

It had fallen at an angle, one door slightly out of alignment with the other.

And nothing they tried to open it was enough to force its secrets.

“Tomorrow,” Celes said.

Locke didn’t like it, and his expression said as much, but he nodded in agreement.

They had to figure it out tomorrow.

Although a year of peace had passed since Kefka’s fall, not all was as it should have been.

Even through the fall of magic, Terra had remained. And she had been as healthy and as happy as any of their fellowship for months, until something deep within her had started slipping away. She had slept more and more, often through the visiting doctors and the friendly concern, and Celes’ constant vigil and Locke’s nigh unending digging.

They had made it this far together, but it had been two days now since she’d last fallen asleep, and nothing they had woken her.

If there was anything that could help her...

It was here.

***

Locke lay staring at the cavern ceiling, high above.

Sleep eluded him.

Which was a problem, because tired adventurers made mistakes. Mistakes could be costly, even on a day when his heart _wasn’t_ hanging in the balance.

Throwing off his blanket, he sat up and rubbed his eyes.

That wasn’t today. Obviously.

Opting to stretch his legs, Locke paced their small camp. Stretching his arms behind his head, he happened to glance down.

Terra was _gone_.

Her blankets were empty. She hadn’t even woken up in three days, yet she just wasn’t there.

As he cast about in confusion, he caught sight of Celes in the distance – across the bridge of stone, flickering white in the darkness – and could only blink as she disappeared into the Gate.

“Wait!”

Pausing to grab his knife, he tucked it into his belt and practically dashed over the fallen mountains of rock that connected their little camping platform to where the Gate sat embedded in the cliff.

It didn’t open for him now any easier than it had last night.

But Celes had made it through.

Closing his eyes, he pressed his hand against it.

And felt nothing.

When he opened his eyes, he found that his hand had simply passed through it.

Taking a deep breath, Locke stepped through the solid facade of ornately carven stone...

...and found himself _falling_ through the darkness.

And falling further still...

...hours, it felt, before he hit the ground.

Yet, the fall itself merely bloodied his lip, like he’d only tripped on his own feet.

Celes was nowhere to be seen.

And he could see himself, even if all around him was darkness.

“Goddesses of Earth and Heaven and Hell,” Locke swore, picking himself up and brushing himself off as he did, “and the Eight Circles that bind them.”

A man chuckled beside him.

It was the crackle of a distant thunderstorm.

Locke pivoted on his heel, squaring for a fight.

“A magician’s oath,” the familiar old man observed. “How pleased I am to hear it, after all this time.”

The fight went out of him, replaced by shock.

“You’re-...”

 _Ramuh_.

“Yes?”

Locke’s mind raced to catch up with what that meant.

“This... is the realm of the Espers?”

“Something like that.” Ramuh regarded him with a discerning eye. “You are looking well, I must say. That warms this old man’s heart. Among others, I am sure... She speaks very highly of you, you know.”

Locke hadn’t realized he’d made such an impression.

“...who?”

“The girl.”

“The-....” Locke blinked. “Terra. She’s here?”

“She has been here since the ebb of Magic.”

Locke stared at the old man. He shook his head. That didn’t make sense.

“...how?”

“We are beyond the Veil. This is the phantom realm.”

“But... no, I mean...” Locke gestured in the vague direction he thought the Gate was in, “She’s out there.”

“My child, an Esper cannot survive on your side of the Veil without magic. That simply cannot be.”

“But she _is_ ,” Locke insisted. “She _was_. She was _fine_. Then she-...”

He wasn’t understanding it. Maybe he didn’t need to. Magic could be like that.

“How can we fix it?” he asked instead. “How can she be alright again in the human world?”

The expression Ramuh wore was patient and understanding, and somehow made Locke feel like a child.

“Millennia hence, magic will flow again,” he explained. “And again we will walk among you. So has it been, so shall it be.”

“She won’t last that long.”

Ramuh ran his fingers through his beard, and nodded once as though making a decision. He reached for Locke’s shoulder.

“Come with me child.”

Locke followed without a word.

It wasn’t nearly as long of a walk as had been the fall.

And what Ramuh had led him to was less a door, and more of a rift between this place and another.

“What you seek is there, in the Heart of the Goddess.”

It was surreal. Everything about this ought to have terrified him, but Ramuh’s presence was overwhelming in its calm.

“My grandfather died before I was born,” Locke said. “What is it with you around that I always think of him?”

Ramuh smiled.

“Distinct though we may be, we are all one.”

Locke looked towards the gap.

“Have your wits about you,” Ramuh warned him.

Squaring his shoulders, Locke nodded his thanks.

And stepped though.

In the darkness surrounded him, he felt the crush of spirits. It was being in the thick of magic. It was _summoning_ , but different.

Espers were here.

All around him.

In the center, in the eye of the storm, was a throne of obsidian glass. Bright like the sun was the woman’s form, and easily as lofty. The Goddess watched him with eyes the color of the moon. Two others, it seemed, were at her back, facing the darkness behind her. The one facing him wore a shroud of starlight, not that it concealed much of anything.

His heart was in his throat.

Somehow, he managed to talk it down to merely lurking in the pit of his stomach.

At the foot of her dais was Terra, soft and glowing a faint pink. The tattered white of Celes’ cloak barely reached her; though Celes had not, it connected them.

Ignoring all else, he took one step towards them.

Only one, as then he couldn’t take another step. Not because he didn’t want to, but because a force was holding him back.

Three voices spoke as one.

“Do you truly believe you can steal from _us_ , little thief?”

Locke licked his lip.

His hand drifted behind his back, to the hilt of his knife.

He raised his eyes, meeting the gaze of the Goddess before him.

“We _killed_ you.”

He tried to sound nonchalant about it.

“You freed us from our mortal prison. We live again, in Balance.”

Was that good?

 _Bad_?

He couldn’t tell.

“I’m not _stealing_ anything. I’m taking them home.”

“That which you desire to take from this place are mine.”

Locke chanced taking his eyes off the enthroned Goddess, and his gaze fell to Terra where she lay on the floor. Then flicked to Celes.

By himself, odds were he wouldn’t have been able to get _one_ of them out. Let alone both. Not if she wanted to stop him, and he had no doubt she could.

Which meant he wasn’t leaving.

Not the easy way.

“Creations of my creations.”

“They don’t _belong_ to you,” Locke growled.

“Tell me, can a man live split in two?”

For a moment, he wasn’t there at all.

He was ten years ago, on the edge of a tattered and frayed rope bridge dangling loose from its mooring.

She hadn’t just dredged up the memory, She had framed him into it.

“No,” he answered, voice dry.

“You would that they be torn asunder, to be as shadows in a world they do not belong. You would wish that upon her? Upon either of them, now that the truth is before you?”

“ _No_. But... I....”

There _had_ to be a way.

“You’re a goddess. You must be able to do something.”

“I hear the plea of every man that has ever once spoken our name.” The Goddess smiled. “I have heard your prayers. The things you whisper in the dark of night. As have I heard all; the whimpers and the screams, the ambition and piety,” Goddess told him, in her threefold voice. “I have seen into your heart. Your hopes, your dreams, your fears all laid bare before me.”

Right.

That wasn’t intimidating at all.

“You say we freed you,” Locke reminded her. “Doesn’t that mean you owe us?”

“If not for you, it would have been another. Your petty bonds ”

Gritting his teeth, he closed his eyes tight.

Counted to three.

Opened his eyes again.

“What would it take for you to help us?”

The Goddess’ eyes narrowed to crescents.

Her veil of starlight shimmered. She stood, and stepped down from Her dais.

“What will you give us?”

His grip on his dagger tightened.

Drawing it, he threw it to the ground. It landed stuck in the dark between them, and Locke opened his arms.

“Take whatever you want of me. Whatever’s mine. I don’t give a damn, so long as you let them go back to the world of the living in peace.”

“Bold words,” the Goddess purred. “And such purity. I’ve heard them before.”

She stepped towards him.

“Make no mistake. If your courage is eclipsed by your fear, little thief – I will have everything that you are.”

This close, he could feel Her mind. An overwhelming force, _ancient_ and _everything_.

She was the force behind the wind that whispered in his soul.

A gale so strong he felt himself being ripped apart at the seams.

“If you’ve really seen into my heart,” Locke spat, “Then you _damn well know_ I _really don’t like_ being called a bloody _thief_.”

The Goddess smiled.

Sharp and elegant and benevolent and malicious.

Everything in the hearts of good and evil men.

And more.

***

Blood sang in his ears, and he sat up sharply, every nerve on fire. The cavern was dark, the only sound within it his harsh gasping for air, contrasted with the serene, only slightly out of tune breathing of the women still asleep beside him.

Except his shirt was tacky with fresh blood; no wound beneath it, and nowhere else.

_Moonlight cast through water, and he stood before a well, sunk into the earth before him._

Except was sitting on the floor.

The difference was...

...all at once, he _knew_.

Locke stood slowly, moving a touch less graceful with the tremble that lingered in his muscles. He squinted in the direction of the Gate.

Stepping neatly around Terra, who slept as soundly as ever, he crouched by Celes.

“Hey,” he tried to shake her awake. “Wake up, would you? I think I... I know what we need to do....”

But she simply... didn’t.

 _Okay_.

 _Well_.

 _That_ certainly killed his small buzz of ‘ _This might all end well,’_ triumph.

She was as gone as Terra was. Trapped in a sleep that could have been magic, but...

“Magic doesn’t exist anymore,” he reminded himself sarcastically.

Getting to work, he rummaged through their supplies until he came up with a rope and grapple.

Falling to a knee at Terra’s side, he slipped his fingers under the chain of her necklace. He tried to be gentle in unclasping it, not that she noticed anyway.

“I’m just borrowing it.” he told her, for all she couldn’t hear him. “I’ll be back, I swear.”

Raising her hand to his mouth, Locke brushed a soft kiss to her knuckles. On his retreat, he paused beside Celes; he brushed his fingers along her cheek, and tucked a loose lock of hair behind her ear.

He turned his back to them, and fixed his gaze ahead.

A little further, was all.

Then everything would be okay.

 _Really_ , this time.

His feet took him, swift and certain, across the bridge.

He got his fingers into the gap and hauled open the Gate, managing despite its size an opening just wide enough to squeeze through.

Fresh, cool air flowed through from the other side.

“This better bloody work,” he muttered to no one in particular.

For once in his life, Locke didn’t feel like praying before repelling into the dark.

***

Having returned the way he came, he barely dared to hope.

_Could a sliver of magic persist in this world?_

“Please,” Locke whispered.

He’d give that far.

Nothing happened.

Not at first.

Then the pendant clutched in his fingers began to glow, brightly as a star in the night sky.

Celes woke first. Sitting up slowly then standing, she kept her back to him.

Rousing from her afflicted slumber at last, Terra made it to her elbows before pausing to blink at the unfamiliar cave surrounding her.

Locke was at her side in an instant, and pulled her into his arms. She eyed him with a certain wariness, though she hooked an arm over his neck, allowing him to hold her close.

“Where... are we?” she asked. “What... happened to the rafters?”

“It’s a long story,” Locke told her, and followed her gaze to the woman keeping herself a strange distance from them. “...Celes?”

When Celes turned, her eyes were full of tears. More had frozen on her cheeks.

“I dreamt of Shiva.” She spoke distantly, as though she hadn’t quite come back from it yet. “I... dreamt that... she forgave me.”

She scrubbed the tears from her face and huffed. Regaining some dignity. She turned towards them, and stopped.

Then made straight for Locke.

She dragged him to his feet, which encouraged Terra to follow him up. Hooking her fingers under the hem of his shirt, she tried to get a look at the wound beneath it.

Only, as he had discovered himself, there wasn’t one.

“Y’know, if you wanna get my shirt off, there are easier ways of doing it,” he teased.

She let him go, then slapped his face gently. He leaned into her palm where it remained on his cheek. Celes’ other arm found its way around Terra’s shoulders, overlapping his. Holding them both tightly.

Locke smiled.

“Let’s get out of here,” he suggested.

 _Let’s go home_.

They broke camp swiftly. Once what little was loose was packed and Terra’s thirst was sated, Celes opted to lead the way back through the cavern.

Pausing where the passage twisted out of sight, Locke looked back towards the Gate and pressed a hand to his chest. The dried blood that had caked into his shirt scratched against his palm.

“Locke?”

Terra’s voice cut through his curious reverie, and caused Celes ahead of her to pause.

It was a musical sound.

“I think I used to like faerie tales a lot more when I hadn’t lived through so many of them,” he told her, closing the distance they’d made with swift strides.

“Um. This is yours, by the way.”

He pressed Terra’s pendant into her palm.

Terra stared at it, at a loss.

He draped an arm over her shoulders, prompting her to continue on alongside him. Once they caught up with Celes, Terra reached for her hand, leaving the pendant and its chain loosely clasped between their fingers.

**Author's Note:**

> -I have _no idea where this came from_ , but I hope you enjoy it. :)  
> -I... also have no answers, and if you need one I'm leaning on 'dreamworld rules.' XD  
> -I have shipped these three since before I knew that you could have three people in a ship. Or what shipping was, to be honest. Thank you for the excuse to write it. <3


End file.
